Why Should You Drain Your Pool?
Being in charge of water management comes with a lot of responsibilities. We have to maintain proper water levels, we have to keep an eye on the equipment, we have to worry about signage and safety and, most importantly, we have to maintain proper water chemistry balance. This is key to a healthy swimming pool. It keeps our bathers safe. It protects our pool’s vessel and equipment. It saves us money. How does it save us money? Let’s take a look!
Keeping bathers safe is super important. Not only do we not want someone to get sick or injured, but we don’t want lawsuits and possibly having our body of water shut down. By keeping people safe with properly balanced water, we are saving people and money! And doing our part to fight against waterborne illnesses and injury. When we talk about “balanced water” what do we mean? We are talking about maintaining adequate sanitizer levels. We mean keeping the pH and alkalinity in range. We mean keeping the cyanuric acid high enough to keep our chlorine from burning off in the harmful sun’s rays, and low enough to not interfere in chlorine functionality.
Keeping our water balanced also protects the vessel from scaling or etching. It helps protect our equipment from eroding or corrosion, thus increasing the lifespan of the equipment. Did you know that damage caused by unbalanced pool water is not covered under warranty and can potentially void it? That could get expensive…and put us in potentially a lot of trouble. In order to reap all of the benefits from well-balanced pool water, we need to test, test, test! With all that rides of proper water balance, we need to do everything possible to ensure accurate water test results. This should include utilizing the most modern technology. That’s where the Pool Shark H2O App comes into play. This innovative App, when paired with the LaMotte Spin Lab heeds spot-on water test results sent to your chosen devices in just 60 seconds! All you have to do is take a syringe full of sample water and squirt it into the spin disc. The disc is then inserted into the spin lab and viola! You have accurate water test results. Not ready to jump on the spin lab? That’s OK! You can manually enter your results as well. Using the Langelier Saturation Index to determine if the water is corrosive, scale forming, or neutral, you are sure to get the best up-to-date results. Not only does the Pool Shark H20 App give you accurate results, it gives you proper dosing instructions based on your size vessel. How cool is that? Peace of mind and water safety? That’s the Pool Shark H20 App to the rescue!
When Should You Drain Your Pool?
There comes a time in every pool operator’s management career when draining the pool is necessary. Reasons for draining can include old, saturated water, high salt or cyanuric acid levels, or other water disasters. Some severe algae blooms leave us with no choice but to drain. The best, money-saving plan is to help avoid the need for draining your pool due to algae or other chemical imbalances. Test, test, test!
How to Drain Your Pool
If we do have to drain the pool, it can get pricey. First, you will need to close the pool for days while the drain and fill are taking place. If you had to drain for algae reasons, you may need an acid or chlorine wash which takes even more time and costs even more money. You may lose guests while the pool is being worked on. Next, you will either need to hire a pool professional or else rent a submersible pump. You can rent a pump at a hardware store, but they are not the fastest pumps. And they usually charge per hour. Hiring a pool company to drain a commercial body of water is probably your BEST and SAFEST bet. Groundwater can actually make a pool ‘pop’ out of the ground if it is drained incorrectly! If that happens, you will need a new pool! Make sure any pool company you hire is licensed and insured. Prices to drain a pool vary by region and by the size of the pool, but you are looking at no less than $1500, based on my experience. Then we, of course, have to pay for the water to refill the pool. The larger the pool, the higher the price tag. The average price for a gallon of water in the United States is around $3.00 a gallon. Check your water bill for your exact rate and then multiply it by the number of gallons in the swimming pool to get a more accurate price.
The pool is full, now what? We have to establish chemical reserves and then balance them. This requires a lot of chlorine. Even if you buy wholesale, you are looking at around $4-$6 a gallon. Chlorine went up during the pandemic and is showing no signs of coming back down. Have a salt body of water? The average cost for a bag of pool salt in the U.S. is around $10. One 40# bag of pool salt will raise 10,000 gallons of water up to 480 ppm. If you have stabilized water, you’ll need to buy cyanuric acid in an amount that can get your levels up to around 30 ppm. One pound per 4,000 gallons will accomplish this. Again, even bargain shoppers will pay around $30 for a 5lb bag of conditioner.
You can see how having to drain a swimming pool can get costly. All the more reason to do all we can to avoid unnecessary or premature draining. This means testing your water and testing it often. With so much riding on proper pool chemistry, it makes sense to invest in a tool that not only makes the testing process easy but with accurate dosing, there is less room for operator error. The Pool Shark H20 App also creates and saves a digital log book for your pool. Gone are the messy, old-fashioned, paper logs which can get wet, misplaced, or not used at all. Heaven forbid someone were to blame your body of water for an illness. You have a digital insurance policy in Pool Shark H2O.
Let’s avoid unnecessary costs such as draining. See you poolside!
